[via Flickr]

Thanks for the tip, Lionel!

On a recent trip to Australia and New Zealand, LeMons Assistant Perpetrator TheEastBayKid found some pretty nice not-found-in-North-America vehicles.

Holden HJ (?) Panel Van, Sydney
Toyota FJ40 Land Cruiser, Airlie Beach Australia
Toyota FJ70 Land Cruiser, Airlie Beach Australia
Mazda 1000 (?) Ute, Brisbane
Daimler SP250, Wellington
Citroen Diane, Wellington
Citroen DS, Wellington
Austin Mini, Wellington
Land Rover Defender 110 Crew Cab, Wellington
BMW 320i (E30) Touring, Wellington
Nissan Safari (Y60 Patrol), Wellington

It appears that the guy in the 5, finding himself behind the CX, takes a "short cut" across the countryside in order to reappear… still behind the CX. Some pretty good Franco-hoonage here, and that's what counts!

Infrequent bursts of fawning published in these pages will prove that the Citroën SM, in its quiet yet revolutionary way, is perhaps the most remarkable automobile ever manufactured. Yet owning one is clearly out of the picture.

Consider: if the engine goes, you’ll have to find a mechanic familiar with 40-year-old carbureted Maserati engines. Then, if anything else goes, you’ll need another mechanic intimate with 40-year-old hydropneumatic Citroëns. If you multiply the respective probabilities of finding such mechanics, you will feel the blood drain from your face.

The nightmarish nature of this scenario is not specific to the United States: contrary to popular belief, Europe does not have trees with mixed bunches of Maserati and Citroën mechanics cavorting on low-hanging branches either.

Yet the SM exerts a powerful visceral tug. Its parts are remarkable by themselves, but the SM is clear testament to the idea that on occasion the whole is indeeed greater than the sum of parts. The strange yet mellifluous 90° V6, the DIRAVI steering, the hydropneumatics, the incredible cabin: the SM’s components combine to make a car that has the ability to cruise in complete comfort at 125 MPH between fillups without breaking down.

Think about that: neither occasional bursts of speed for joy or overtaking nor a single cross-continental blitz with the result of you being on time and your car a smoldering wreck, but a grand tourer for regular grand tours.

The world has since moved on from such earthbound flights of fancy. The SM’s was a world infinitely less hostile to the automobile than ours. Its vehicular contemporaries were:

1. A hypersonic civilian jetliner flirting with time travel
2. A military spy plane made of titanium which could outrun anti-aircraft rockets
3. An air-cooled twelve-cylinder racing car with 1500 HP
4. A giant space rocket which regularly whisked American men from the gravitational pull of the Earth to deposit them on the surface of the Moon
5. The Lamborghini Miura

Yes, wow. That was four decades ago.

Perhaps we should all just forget about the Citroën SM. Ours is a world not of grand tours but of shuffling in socks through airports and molassing along at 65 MPH in plastic cabins.

Yet imagine! Just imagine a contemporary SM.

The Japanese would have to build it. The Japanese are less interested in haphazard, grandiose revolution than in taking established concepts and polishing them to perfection. The way Toyota usurped Mercedes-Benz’s lead in luxury sedans to produce the last word in personal transportation inside motorized whales, the Lexus LS600hL.

But a modern SM is not a Toyota job. In spite of occasional displays of deep petrolhead inspiration—the 2000GT, the AE86, the LFA—Toyota does not make touring cars you’d like to tour in high style in. The modern SM should be a Honda, built on Soichiro Honda’s legacy of mechanical madness and racing chops.

In fact, Honda has already made something akin to a modern SM: the NSX of 1991, a perfect, luxurious grand tourer disguised as a mid-engined sports car and generally mistaken for a Ferrari. Plus, they have taken the SM’s glass headlights enclosure and installed it on the current Civic, which is as close in chutzpah to the SM as a mass-market hatchback can be.

(And it’s not like cooperation between Japanese and French carmakers is such a long shot either. In fact, Citroën already makes a crossover called the C-Crosser on a Japanese platform, the Mitsubishi GS: a base for excellence like the Evo X and also for the abomination that is the Chrysler Sebring.)

Honda could pull it off. As for what our slow world could do with the perfect idea of the touring car executed with Japenese attention to detail, I do not have a clue. But do we really want to go down in history as the generation which has all but abandoned forward motion?

Photo Credit: PlingPlöng/Flickr, afghtiga/Flickr, Infinite Jeff/Flickr, cosmicspanner/Flickr, Ignacio Conejo/Flickr, Jim Ross/NASA, nielsvk/Flickr, Steve Kay/Flickr

Face it: I'm a doofus when it comes to taking care of the modern car. The replacement of mechanics with electronics has shifted the power of tinkering squarely into the domain of geeks. But there still exist a few simple car maintenance tasks we should be able to perform without expensive shop time.

The blatant frenchsploitation displayed above is the work of Tim Street, a Disney World engineer turned television writer, who began producing French Maid TV in 2006. Street’s videos teach you how to do simple things, employing women with huge breasts and fake French accents to hold your attention and your jacques and jacques stands.

How To Change Your Oil is one of those videos you’ll watch over and over again, amazed and that a professional production has actually drawn the parallels between oil spillage and mammary intercourse in the most explicit way.

Even more amazing is that the video is actually useful. Useful for learning how to change your oil, that is. Especially if you drive a US-spec Citroën SM, that is.

Yesterday, we checked out a low-mileage 944S which engendered one of the healthier debates over Nice Priciness, or Crack Piperdom. Who knew a Porsche could be so polarizing? In the end (front end, as this was a 944) it walked away with a pretty decisive 74% Nice Price win, so the haters may have been disproportionately vocal, or just too lazy to vote.

Something else that's lazy is the performance of today's contender, which is an out of the ordinary and eclectically-styled 1964 Ami6 from Citroën. Meaning Friend in its native tongue, and offered up on eBay from its adopted home of Milwaukee, WI, this bigger brother to the 2CV is something you'll probably never see coming your way here in the land of Freedom Fries. But, having considered this one, you won't be left standing there wondering what just bleu bayou, should one pass by.

The $12,400 Buy-It-Now price reflects its lofty position on the supply side of the economic equation- while common in France, they're rare as mime appreciation societies here in the U.S.. Also reflective is how nice this car appears, which is; very. That's because of a recent restoration, mechanical overhaul, and a re-spray in sacre-bleu back in 2007.

The Ami6 was built between 1961 and 1978, and was intended to be a more civilized compatriot to the agrarian Deux chevaux- no baskets of eggs for the Ami! The country mouse/city mouse differences were mostly in the body, which features slide-open windows and a traditional trunk. Mechanically, it is the 2CV, continuing that car's leading/trailing arm suspension and horizontally-opposed air-cooled twin. As all that luxury (remember the windows?) added weight, the Ami received an enlarged prostate motor of 602-ccs, still allowing it to limbo under the government-imposed 610-cc tax limit. That provides 24 bhp which still took over 30 wacks to get its 1,360 lbs up to 50. Top speed is about 65 mph, given enough room to build up a head of steam and a tail wind, while a light drizzle hitting the windscreen may drop that by a few.

As proof that those 24 ponies are really all you need, the seller includes some YouTube Cinéma vérité shorts, including the following, simply titled: Ma voiture est un poisson très grand.

You might have noticed an iconic, and some might say bizarre, styling feature of the Ami which is the reverse-raked rear window. Similar to the Mercury Monterey or Ford Anglia, the design affords plenty of headroom as well as makes the car look like it's doing 20 while just standing still. The yellow Cibies and three-lug rims (check out the spare) complete the Franco-bona fides of this little salon.

So, would you pay $12,400 so you and three of your Amis (we recommend Rachel, Monica and Phoebe) can travel in Gallic style? Or does that price make this Citroën a friend in name only?

You decide!

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The Citroën SM stands on the precipice of Vorsprung, it is from an era when the casual observer could believe in an eternity of progress. Men had repeatedly walked on the Moon, rock music was reaching for lofty heights and there was a passenger airplane, manufactured by an unlikely consortium of state-owned British and French firms, which could travel at twice the speed of sound.

We don’t have such planes now. The Concorde was mankind’s only functioning time machine available for non-military use: you could have lunch in London, digest it aboard and continue your day—with breakfast in New York City.

The Citroën SM was the Concorde’s contemporary, borne of a similar transnational corporate background, but it was the Italians instead of the British who partnered the French this time. The M in SM stands for Maserati, owned by Citroën at the time and responsible for the SM’s engine, but I needn’t tell you all this: google “Citroën SM” and you will find right on the first page a feature article published on this very website which will tell you all about it.

You can go for years and years without seeing an SM and this is not an accident: its relentlessly futuristic engineering was marred by the combined unreliability of its French and Italian heritage. If you were to fantasize about seeing one in the wild, you would probably conjure images of French country roads or Italian mountain passes but surely not Telegraph Road in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills.

Specifically the restaurant Andiamo, formerly known as the Machus Red Fox, most famous for being the place where Jimmy Hoffa was last seen alive.

Yet that is exactly where Ray Wert, John Krewson and I saw a working SM for the first time in our collective lives. We were on our way back to New York City, returning from the Woodward Dream Cruise, and we stopped for breakfast at Steve's Deli across from the restaurant where Jimmy Hoffa was last seen, waving goodbye to the monster portions and trans fats of Midwestern cuisine.

We were just about to leave our Camaro and enter a local house of wonderful fat when we saw it. A golden SM, getting ready to leave. It was an American-spec SM, easily recognizable by its four fixed headlights in place of the original’s six swiveling ones, which could not slip through U.S. regulations. An actual human was sitting in the driver’s seat. Upon his commands, the vehicle moved under its own power. An artifact of more promising times, when engineering was set to conquer the future in style. Need evidence? Here’s L.J.K. Setright on the SM’s hydropneumatic steering in his book Drive On!:

Just imagine: a year after the Concorde, fastest and most beautiful of Bristols, had taken to the air in defiance of kinetic heating, pressure gradients, trim changes and all the control and other problems associated with sustained flight at 60,000ft and Mach 2, the fuddies and the duddies were shaken with dismay by the very thought of the Citroën SM having fully powered steering with entirely artificial feel. It was simple, really: the basic accumulator pressure powered the steering, but pitted against it was the output of a secondary pump driven by the transmission so that its output was proportional to the road speed of the car. At parking speeds, it offered no resistance; at 110mph there was enough to cancel assitance.

The SM motored away and we went inside to dive into plates of high calorie breakfasts. Outside, under an August sun not yet bearing down with its full power, the SM was spooling up its hyperdrives. This rolling projectile of weird magnificence, this golden and flawed and slippery capsule from the space age, a car ahead of its time both in design and acceptable ratios of high engineering versus reliability, it motored away.

Wert and Krewson had omelettes. I had French toast. It was okay. (Technically, I had salami and eggs at Steve's Deli. — Ed.)

Photo Credit: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images (Concorde) and the author

It still has a canvas top, it's gained clamshell portes suicides, and it's more luxurious than the original 2CV, because not even the French bring wicker seats to an auto show. However, it's currently about as powerful as the old 2CV, because this concept doesn't seem to come with an engine, just a promise that it's fit for all sorts of "lively and spirited" zero-emissions powerplants. Heck, it's the French, so we recommend the unbridled testing of nukes.

Photo Credit: THOMAS LOHNES/AFP/Getty Images

Even 20 years is a long, long time in automotive-design years, and so we've established that as the cutoff for this list. We're not talking about model names that have been around forever (e.g., Crown Victoria, Century, Bluebird), but a particular chassis/generation of a car that remained fundamentally unchanged over its lifespan. We're not including light trucks, mostly because it's damn near impossible to sort out Soviet military stuff. Obviously, a lot of quasi-arbitrary judgment calls had to be made with some of the candidates- does a different engine or totally restyled body make for a distinct vehicle?- and so we're confident that we've provided something to enrage every one of you, be it a car that totally qualified that we blew off or a totally undeserving car that we sneaked into the list. For example, were there differences between the first few generations of the Ford Fiesta sufficient to make that car ineligible for this list? We said yes, which Fiesta zealots will no doubt consider to be fatwa-grade heresy. In any case, we've probably made some mistakes, and we've definitely missed some cars that belonged on the list. Fire away with the hate mail, by all means!

Things get somewhat sticky when it comes to Fiats built outside of Italy. We think the Polski Fiat 125p shouldn't get lumped in with either the Fiat 125 or the Fiat 1300/1500, it being a cost-cutting mashup of the two, so we're giving this 24-year veteran its own place of honor in the Jalopnik Cars Of Immortality Hall Of Fame. Likewise, by the time VAZ got around to the VAZ-2107 (aka Lada Riva), its design had diverged sufficiently from its Fiat 124 ancestry that we consider it and the 124 to be separate cars. You 124 fanatics don't need to fret about that outrage, though- thanks to production in India and Egypt, the 124 doesn't need the later Ladas to nail down 31 years.

You may have noted the conspicuous shortage of American machinery in this list; other than the first-gen Ford Falcon (built in Argentina until the 1990s) and the Checker Marathon, there were no easy calls to be made for American manufacturers. We've included the rear-wheel-drive GM T Body, because of the bewildering swarm of Kadetts, Chevettes, I-Marks, and low-production South American clones that flew forth from that design; we're saying 21 years for the T, and you're free to argue your guts out about it. How about the GM B platform, which stayed in service from the '61 Buick Invicta to the '96 Chevy Caprice? The General performed nearly half a dozen major redesigns of the B platform over the decades, and not enough components interchange between one B generation and the next for it to be considered the same car for 20 solid years. Same goes for the Ford Panther platform (1979-present) and the hordes of Chrysler K derivatives (eternity). The Model T was only made for 19 years, so it doesn't make the list (unless someone can dig up some proof that it was being bootlegged in the Maldives), nor does the Willys Aero, even with all those years of production in Brazil. What really broke our hearts was the Rambler American/Renault Torino, which almost made the list at 18 years of production in Wisconsin and Argentina (we were looking for loopholes to prove that the '64 Rambler American was actually a cosmetic facelift of an earlier version, but no dice).

This project got really challenging when we got to Chinese-built versions of Japanese and Korean cars. The line between "facelifted license-built copy" and "based on heavily modified chassis design" gets increasingly blurry in China, and most likely we've overlooked a couple of 20+ year Chinese versions of Mazdas or Suzukis. Chinese Volkswagens were a lot easier to figure out, but how about Malaysian Mitsubishi clones- or are they clones?- sold in China? Ai-ya!

Here we go, fifty cars that were built for 20 years or longer, as close as we could get to the right order:

Volkswagen Type 1
65 years (1938-2003)
The Beetle was built in Germany from 1938 through 1980, which would have put it in second place on our list, behind the Mini but just in front of the 2CV. However, production in Brazil (1950-1996) and Mexico (1955-2003) gives the little Ferdinand Porsche-designed ass-engine air-cooler a whopping 22-year-edge over the Mini.

Morris Oxford / Hindustan Ambassador
55 years (1954-present)
The case could be made that the previous generation of the Oxford, which debuted in 1948, was similar enough to the '54 that the Oxford/Ambassador deserves 61 years instead of 55. However, the Amby is still being made! That means the much-beloved little Indian car has a shot at catching the Beetle. Engines have come and gone (the '09 Amby has Isuzu power), but the essential Oxford-ness of the car remains.

Austin Mini
43 years (1957-2000)
An Old Mini with airbags? Yes, the car that started the front-wheel-drive/hatchback revolution managed to stay relevant into the current century. Park one of these next to one of those BMW-built imitators and you'll see what a small car really looks like!

Citroën 2CV
41 years (1949-1990)
How much power does a car really need? Ask a Citroën engineer in the late 40s and he'd tell you: nine horsepower! Later models had nearly four times that, with 33 horses being the max from the factory. Of course, some had a little more than that when they went racing. Nearly four million were made.

Fiat 128 / Zastava Skala / Nasr 128 / SEAT 128
40 years (1969-present)
How many versions of the groundbreaking front-driver 128 are out there? Why, even Enzo Ferrari drove one! In addition to being a huge hit in Europe, where it was built until 1985, Zastava continues to build 128s (branded as the Zastava 55) to this day; as of last year, you could still get an Egyptian-made Nasr 128.

Austin FX4
39 years (1958-1997)
We can't include the Checker Marathon in this list without also including the most iconic of the old London Black Cabs. The FX4 was built by different manufacturers over the years and went through quite a few engines, but it remained essentially the same vehicle. Two Austins in the Top Ten!
Image source

Fiat 1100 / Premier Padmini
38 years (1962-2000)
Clearly, the key to getting your car built for a few extra decades is to make Indian buyers love it. As the Fiat 1100, this car was done in Italy by 1969, but India's Premier Automobiles Limited kept on making the 1100 (badged as the Padmini) until 2000.
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Hillman Hunter / Iran Khodro Paykan
37 years (1967-2004)
Hey, Rootes Group machinery survived into the 21st century! The Paykan got Peugeot power eventually, but it remained a Hillman at heart. Paykan production equipment was sold to a Sudanese company a few years back, though we've had no news so far of any gleaming new Paykans being built there. Wait a couple of decades and we may see the Paykan hang in there to beat the Beetle's longevity record!
Image source

Peugeot 504
37 years (1968-2005)
The 504 was built for 15 years in France, then continued production in Argentina until 1999. Africans still loved the 504 after that, with production continuing in Kenya (2004) and Nigeria (2005). Don't be shocked if someone starts building the 504 once again.

Renault 12 / Dacia 1300
37 years (1969-2006)
The 12 was yet another Renault success story, with production on five continents and millions sold. The last Renault-branded 12 was built in Turkey in 1999, but Romanian automaker Dacia made the 12-clone Dacia 1300/1310 until just a few years ago.
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Fiat 131 / SEAT 131 / Tofaş Murat 131
35 years (1974-present)
Also known as the Brava and Mirafiori, the 131 had ten years of Italian production, then lived on in Spain, Turkey, and now Ethiopia.
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Volkswagen Golf Mk1
35 years (1974-present)
Yes, you can still buy the first version of the biggest-selling VW car since the air-cooled Beetle! South Africans love the Mk1 Golf so much that they've been making them since 1974.

Renault 4
33 years (1961-1994)
Usually, a Renault made for more than 30 years indicates that some Warsaw Pact nation built it under license for a couple of decades past the point of relevance in the home market. Not so with the 4! Intended as competition for the hugely successful Citroën 2CV, the Renault 4 outlived its rival by four years.
Image source

Moskvitch 408/412
33 years (1964-1997)
You'll have to pick up the definitive guide to Soviet cars to get the whole Moskvitch 408 story, but here's one fun fact: when the hard-currency-strapped Soviet Union started importing Moskvitches to the UK, the price tag for this fairly substantial car was £22 less than the tiny Mini. Including cars made by the Izhevsk Mechanical Works, the 408/412 stayed in production until the late 1990s.

Ford Falcon (first generation)
31 years (1960-1991)
Imagine going to a Ford dealership and having a choice between a new Sierra XR4i and a new '62 Falcon. That's how it went down in Argentina, where facelifted but still recognizable first-generation Falcons were made until 1991. You could even get a diesel Falcon! We're just disappointed that Ford Of Argentina didn't keep building the '69 Fairlane fastback into the 1990s.

Peugeot 404
31 years (1960-1991)
Kenyan production kept the 404 (car of choice for Ho Chi Minh) going for extra decades.
Image Source

Fiat 124 / VAZ-2101 Lada / SEAT 124 / Tofaş Murat 124 / Premier 118NE
31 years (1966-1984, 1986-2001)
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Renault 5 / SAIPA Sepand
30 years (1972-2000)
We North Americans knew the 5 as the Le Car; we missed out on the goofy European 5 ads but we did get some cheezy ones of our own. European production halted in 1996, when the last Slovenian 5 left the assembly line, but Iranian carmaker SAIPA made the 5 (badged as the Sepand) until 2000.
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Vauxhall Victor FE / Hindustan Contessa
30 years (1972-2002)
We could probably stretch the ancestry of the Contessa back another couple of generations of Vauxhall Victors, but 30 years is pretty good. Do the owners of Contessas, with their early-70s British styling, look down on the Ambassador drivers stuck with 40s British design?
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Fiat 126 / Polski Fiat 126p
28 years (1972-2000)
The original Italian-built 126 made it to 1980, but fortunate Polish buyers could get the Polski Fiat version for another 20 years.
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Zastava Koral / Yugo
28 years (1980-2008)
Is this car really a Fiat 128? We think the Koral (aka Yugo) differs enough from its progenitor, and has sufficient history of its own, to merit its own entry in our all-time survivors' list.

Volkswagen Passat Mk2 / Santana
28 years (1981-present)
Is the Mk2 Passat close enough to the Mk1 to move the start date back to 1973? We say it's not. As long as the Chinese keep building Santanas, however, the second-gen Passat will keep moving up in the ranks.

Alfa Romeo Spider
27 years (1966-1993)
Will Alfa freaks be proud that this design stayed in front-line service for so long, or splutter about the changes that "modernized" their car over the years?

GAZ-3102 Volga
27 years (1982-present)
Image source

VAZ-2107 / Lada Riva
27 years (1982-present)
We'll be seeing one of these at the 24 Hours Of LeMons next month!
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Checker Marathon
26 years (1956-1982)
Many different engines, but the Marathon stayed the same.

Mitsubishi Lancer (3rd gen) / Proton Saga
25 years (1983-2008)
How much of the Lancer Fiore remains in today's Saga? Nearly all of it, apparently. Note: the image depicts the non-Lancer-based '09 Saga.
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Daihatsu Charade / FAW Xiali TJ7101
26 years (1983-present)
See how much useful information you can extract from the FAW website about this fine automobile, then let us know if we were totally wrong in assuming that it's still a Charade.
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Fiat Uno
26 years (1983-present)
The Uno was made all over the world, but Brazil is the last Uno holdout, building sedan and wagon versions.
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Porsche 911
25 years (1964-1989)
Was the 911 essentially the same car until the 964 version? Quite a tough call; if we exclude the 911 from the list, we'll be fending off a rain of Molotov cocktails from enraged Porsche fanatics who feel left out. Including it will make many of those same fanatics mail us some Unabomber-style packages, since we're implying that the 911 hasn't always been at the very leading edge of performance-car technology. We decided that sufficient parts interchange between '64 and '89 models to get the 911 on this list.

Fiat 127
25 years (1971-1996)
The Argentinean version of the 127-based Fiat 147 wagon continued until 1996, 16 years after Fiat stopped building the car in Italy.
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Lada Samara
25 years (1984-present)
There's no Fiat content in the all-Russian Samara, and you can still buy yourself one! After the end of the Soviet Union, the Samara got some pretty entertaining commercials.

Volkswagen Jetta Mk 2
25 years (1984-present)
You can still buy the second-gen Jetta in China, where the car is badged as the Jetta King.

Polski Fiat 125p
24 years (1967-1991)
Not really a Fiat 125 (the suspension is from the 1300), we say the 125p is a separate model.
Image source

FSO Polonez
24 years (1978-2002)
It's a Polski Fiat 125p under the skin, but we think the Giorgetto Giugiaro body and variety of engine choices make it a different car.
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Jaguar XJ6 Mk1
24 years (1968-1992)
The original XJ6 was just so good that no major redesigns were needed for those 24 years.

Citroën Traction-Avant
23 years (1934-1957)
The oldest car on this list, the Traction-Avant was so far ahead of its time in the 1930s that it stayed relevant into the Jet Age.

Morris Minor
23 years (1948-1971)

ZAZ-968 Zaporozhets
22 years (1972-1994)
Depending on how you interpret model changes and upgrades, the air-cooled "Soviet Corvair" might qualify for moving up in the ranks of this list... or being dropped from it. Try not to roll it over, comrades!
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Tatra 613
22 years (1974-1996)
Hooray, a Tatra made the list!
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Mazda 121 / Kia Pride / Saipa Pride / Ford Festiva
22 years (1987-present)
Talk about your confusing cascade of captive imports and badge engineering! We're pretty sure that some variety of this car has been in production since 1987.

Peugeot 405
22 years (1987-present)
Peugeot stopped making the 405 in France in 1997, but Iran Khodro continues to build them to this day.

Citroën DS
21 years (1955-1976)
Another example of a car so ahead of its time that Citroën could keep selling it for decades. Too bad the Goddess was so complex; otherwise someone would still be building the DS.

Austin-Healey Sprite / MG Midget
21 years (1958-1979)
Not much about the Spridget changed over its lifetime, other than the addition of big black plastic bumpers and the subtraction of horsepower. Oh, sure, the bug eyes disappeared early on and a few nods to modern technology (e.g., disc brakes) were slapped on, but overall we're dealing with a car that was obsolete from day one and stayed that way throughout its production run (as a Sprite owner, I'm allowed to say such things).

General Motors T Body (RWD)
21 years (1973-1994)
The Chevette, the Acadian, the Kadett C, the Gemini, the I-Mark, the Bird, the Chevanne... the list of cars that The General and his allies built on the rear-wheel-drive T platform goes on and on. Hell, maybe someone is still building the T; our eyes started glazing over after a couple hours of research.

VAZ-1111 Oka
21 years (1988-present)
The Oka appears to have the honor of Most Horrible Economy Car In The World nailed down, but it still sells pretty well in the former Soviet Union.
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Zastava Florida / Nasr Florida
21 years (1988-present)
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Fiat 500 (original)
20 years (1957-1977)
Would you believe that Fiat built the iconic Cinquecento until 1977?
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Saab 99/900
26 years (1968-1994)
As MrB00st and 900pilot have pointed out, the 900 was essentially a lengthened 99, and the 900 went to a new platform in '94. So, 26 years instead of 20.

Suzuki Cultus Gen 2 / Geo Metro / Holden Barina/ etc
20 years (1989-present)
Also known as the Suzuki Swift, this car probably holds the record for most bewildering sequence of model names and licensing deals.

When you're done here, you might enjoy our favorite VW ads, then continue your car-advertising overdose with the Datsun, Toyota, Renault, General Motors, British Leyland, Ford/Lincoln/Mercury, Honda, and Chevrolet ads.

1995 XM Pallas	1975 GSX	1987 BX
1973 GS	1980 2CV	1977 GS
1988 AX	1987 AX Hit FM	1985 CX

Unfortunately, I'm not quite sure exactly what he did, since all the info I can find on this car is in French (my knowledge of which pretty much starts and ends with "force de frappe"), but the photos tell enough of the story to make it clear that we're dealing with a junkyard god here. According to tipster and Project Car Hell Poster Child Franzouse: "ok, so the guy didn't have to pose in his speedos, but what an awesome nut job! (if you scroll around the site you'll see he's also built a boat... )
[Chameu d'acier, Foutraquegarage]

I've been falling really, really behind on Down On The Street Bonus Edition photos, so I'm going to try to get back on track with the series today with this contribution from Kim Of Copenhagen.:

Encouraging to see both the International & the SAAB and the stuff I wrote on Jalopnik, so here's some more. I thought of sending pics of an Amazon as well, to complement the story below, but they appear on Jalopnik often enough.

In the mid-1960's the Danish police force used the Ford Zodiac's downscale sibling, the Zephyr. The latter shared the wide body of the former, which was taken advantage of by the so-called 'Volvo Robber', who more often than not would use a stolen Volvo Amazon as the getaway car after break-ins and bank robberies. Once he carefully planned his escape route through a tight spot where a Zephyr was just a bit too wide, and thus manged to evade The Law. He was hardly a Robin Hood type, but the press as well as the public loved the story.

This Zodiac is literally the first I've seen on the street for 30+ years. That goes for the Vauxhall Victor too. Note the cross stitch pillow in the rear window - a common home-made accessory of the early 60's.

The Citroên is not as rare a beast, because the few that didn't rust away before mandatory bi-annual inspections were introduced ten years ago, are usually well kept and keep their value. One could reasonably argue that this was the last beautiful Citroên design.

Yes, the Historischer Autofriedhof Gürbetal collection, which comprises the largest concentration of pancreas-meltingly cool project cars ever assembled in one place, will go under the auctioneer's gavel on September 19th. Naturally, I'll be doing some furious lobbying to get the Gawker Overlords to ship me over there to buy every Jalopnik employee his own Official Jalopnik Staff Car (I'm sort of torn between one of the Lancia Flaminias and the Sunbeam Rapier for myself). There's plenty of Detroit iron, too, including 13 Plymouth Valiants and 10 Chevy Impalas. You can get the complete PDF list of the vehicles here; we'll share some of the highlights:
• 9 1947-52 Citroën 11s
• 13 Alfa Romeo Giuliettas
• 6 Borgward Isabellas
• 5 Chevy IIs
• 14 Morris Minors
• 23 Opel Olympias
• 6 Studebaker Champions
You get the idea. Go here for the overview, here for some more. Thanks to OneWheelDrive for the tip!

The Voxmobile struck a chord of discontent with 69% of you yesterday, although we think you may have been viewing the Psychedelic Psled through rose colored granny glasses. Anyway, today, back to real cars.

Citroëns are weird. There's just no getting around that fact. But they're not strange in the way German porn is, but more like that cute girl who expresses her personality through unbridled honesty and the wearing of horn-rimmed glasses- and who really turns you on.

While other French auto makers churned out expressive, individualistic products, Citroën marched to a different beat- a beat that could be construed as being, perhaps, off-beat. They built sleek, idiosyncratic machines unlike any others. With suspension travel so long, it required a visa, Citroëns traverse the roads like sharks trolling the sea-floor- unperturbed by irregularities and unflustered even at speed.

Considered by many to be the last true Citroën before the company was absorbed into the Peugeot hive-mind, the CX was introduced in 1974. It debuted as replacement for the legendary DS, and continued many of the advanced technologies of that car. The hydro-pneumatic self-leveling suspension - so advanced that both Rolls Royce and Mercedes Benz licensed it for their halo cars - provided a hovercraft-like ride, and the speed-adjustable DIRAVI power steering would automatically self-center - even while standing still - providing hours of driveway entertainment for new owners.

Today we have an '87 CX, and a GTi no less, that is one of the few modded cars done by CXA, which makes it trés bon with the fédérals. Sadly, the switcheroo required it to learn to say the pedge of allegiance in English and trade in its cool euro-specs for plain American googly-glasses. That means the ‘70s sci-fi dash with its KM/hr-reading rolling drum instruments, and the smooth glass headlamps have been replaced with, respectively, round dials and sealed beams. Other elements not working in this car's favor are some minor body damage, an automatic gearbox that makes the car good for only about 20 highway, and seat upholstery which might set off seizures in epileptics.

But there's a lot of good here as well- the 2.5 litre, 138 bhp transverse four is known as being uncharacteristically French for its never give up durability. It has that wonderful hydro-pneumatic damn-near everything, including brakes that you should be forewarned about before first engaging, lest you end up thrown through the windscreen due to their operation based on pressure rather than travel. It also possesses the single-spoke steering wheel challenging you to find 10 and 2. All that is wrapped up in one hell of a sexy spaceship of a hatchback body. And it could be yours for only $6,500.

Now, we know there's been a lot of crack this week, but what do you think, is $6,500 too much to pretend you're President Sarkozy? Or is that about right for so weird and wonderful a ride? And who knows, perhaps a CX25 GTi would help you gain the attention of that cute girl in the horn-rimmed glasses.


You decide!

LeBay, or go here if the ad becomes unbearably petulant.

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Just click on any of the thumbnails below to jump to the original post about that car.

1937 Beardmore	1953 Citroën	1956 Morris	1959 Morris
1960 Peugeot	1960 Triumph	1961 Morris	1963 Land Rover
1965 Austin	1965 Alfa Romeo	1966 Jaguar	1966 Lancia
1966 Volvo	1969 MG	1969 Volvo	1969 Volvo
1969 Citroën	1970 Volvo	1971 Volvo	1971 MG
1972 Triumph	1972 Steyr	1973 Volvo	1973 MG
1974 Jensen-Healey	1975 Citroën	1975 MG	1977 Fiat
1977 Volvo	1978 Jaguar	1978 Saab	1980 Volvo
1981 Fiat	1982 Fiat	1984 Jaguar	1985 Alfa Romeo
1985 Saab	1985 Peugeot	1986 Jaguar	1988 Renault
1988 Peugeot	1989 Ferrari	1989 Alfa Romeo	1991 Peugeot
1991 Alfa Romeo	1991 Rolls-Royce

The plant is surrounded by gas canisters connected to a worker by an electrical cord. It's assumed the canisters are actually empty, but following the kidnapping of other executives, no one is trying anything. The gas canisters probably wouldn't blow up the building but, if they are filled, could set a gigantic fire. (H/T to Cale!)

[The Detroit News]

ALAIN JOCARD/AFP/Getty Images

The deep bass of the American V8-powered GTbyCITROËN concept certainly sounds better than the UFO-esque sounds pumping out of it in Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, but will it sound this knarly when it begins it's limited-number production run? We might just have to start forgiving the French if that's going to be the case. (Hat Tip To @asianmartin!)

The song is Un temps pour tout off Vincent Delerm’s fourth studio album Quinze Chansons and the car is a one of those Citroëns from back when Citroën was still the weirdest and coolest mainstream carmaker in the world: a Citroën GS.

A GS Break to be specific, and contrary to what you might be thinking, this does not allude to its typical 70s French tendency for instant rusting but is simply the French term for station wagon.

Designed by Robert Opron—who did the swiveling headlights on the DS and followed on with that most gorgeous of French-Italian marriages, the Maserati-powered Citroën SM—the GS launched in 1970 in typical Citroën style: suspended by hydropneumatics, powered by air-cooled flat-four engines.

Realizing they could out-weird that, a 1973 version called the Birotor was launched with a—that’s right—birotor Wankel engine. The launch was perfectly timed to coincide with the 1973 oil crisis, resulting in a grand total of 847 units sold. The base GS was much more successful: by the time production wrapped up in 1986, Citroën had made 2.5 million of them.

And even though many have succumbed to the harsh mistress of oxygen, at least one is still on the road. It’s good to know. After watching this, it’s rather tempting to dress in stylishly offbeat clothes and spend all day doing nothing in particular, with strategically timed glasses of wine.

Photo Credit: kanonn/Flickr, dave_7/Flickr